The Zeit-Geist eBook

Then, seeming to be satisfied, he closed his eyes
and went back into the state of drowsiness.

CHAPTER XIV.

Ann went up to the house. It was a great relief
to her to remember that the man for whom she was going
to ask help was no criminal. She could hold up
her head and speak boldly.

Another minute and she began to look curiously to
see how long the grass and weeds had grown before
the door. It was some months since David Brown
had been here. The doubt which had entered Ann’s
mind grew swiftly. She knocked loudly upon the
door and upon the wooden shutters of the windows.
The knocks echoed through empty rooms.

She had no hesitation in house-breaking. In a
shed at the back she found a broken spade which formed
a sufficiently strong and sharp lever for her purpose.
She pried open a shutter and climbed in. She found
only such furniture as was necessary for a temporary
abode. A small iron stove, a few utensils of
tin, a huge sack which had been used for a straw bed,
and a few articles of wooden furniture, were all that
was to be seen.

Upon the canvas sack she seized eagerly. Bart
might be dying, or he might be recovering from some
injury; in either case she had only one desire, and
that was to procure for him the necessary comforts.
Having no access to hay or straw, she began rapidly
to gather the bracken which was standing two and three
feet high in great quantities wherever the ground
was dry under the trees. She worked with a nervous
strength that was extraordinary, even to herself,
after the toilsome night. When she had filled
the sack, she put it upon the floor of the lower room
and went back to the canoe. She saw that Bart
had roused himself and was sitting up. He was
even holding on to the rushes with his hand—­an
act which she thought showed the dreamy state of his
mind, for she did not notice that the rope had come
undone. She helped Bart out of the canoe, putting
her arm strongly round him so that he was able to walk.
She saw that he had not his mind yet; he said no word
about the help she gave him; he walked as a sleeping
man might walk. When she laid him down upon the
bed of bracken and arranged his head upon the thicker
part which she had heaped for a pillow, he seemed
to her to fall asleep almost at once; and yet, for
fear that his strange condition was not sleep, she
hastily opened the bag of food and the flask of rum.

She stripped the twigs from a tiny spruce tree, piling
them inside the old stove. When they had cracked
and blazed with a fierce, sudden heat, Ann could only
break bread-crumbs into a cupful of boiling water and
put a few drops of rum in it. She woke Bart and
fed him as she might have fed a baby. When he
lay down again exhausted, with that strange moan which
he always gave when he first put back his head, she
had the comfort of believing that a better colour
came to his cheek than before. She resolved that
if he rested quietly for a few hours and appeared
better after the next food she gave him, she would
think it safe to cushion the canoe with bracken and
take him home. This thought suggested to her
to moor the canoe.